‘Diefenbaby’ dead at 47
Man who believed he was son of PM attempted suicide after pancreatic cancer battle
George John Dryden, who spent years of his life trying to prove he was the child of former prime minister John George Diefenbaker, died on Sunday, a longtime friend said.
Dryden, 47, who had terminal pancreatic disease, suffered fatal injuries in a suicide attempt, Merry-Ellen Unan said.
He blamed decades of alcohol abuse for the illness. “I didn’t have a bad life,” he told The Canadian Press last week in his last interview. “I basically ended up killing myself.”
Dryden, who bore an uncanny resemblance to “The Chief,” grew up in a Toronto family of privilege as the son of prominent federal Liberal Gordon Dryden.
About five years ago, however, a cousin told him it had long been a quiet family rumour that Dryden’s mother, Mary Lou Dryden, had an affair with Diefenbaker that led to his conception.
In a stunning revelation, DNA tests confirmed Gordon Dryden was not his biological parent.
The bombshell sparked his elusive quest to prove his parentage definitively. It also caused an ugly rupture with the Drydens. The family kept him from his ailing mother and hid the death of his father from him for eight months.
Dryden said his mom, known confidante of Diefenbaker, admitted to him she had seen Diefenbaker privately around the time he was conceived in late 1967 or early 1968, a few months after she married Gordon Dryden.
The former prime minister would have been 72 at the time. She would have been in her mid-30s.
She also told him his father’s name was John, Dryden said.
Known Diefenbaker relatives refused to co-operate, but Dryden managed to obtain a DNA sample from one of them, which proved enough of a match to convince him of the relationship.
“I don’t have any doubts,” Dryden said last week. “But nobody is going to say it.”
His belief was bolstered when DNA tests showed he was related to the Goertzens in Saskatchewan, three brothers with whom he had no known connection. The brothers had previously learned that their father, Ed Thorne, was the son of Mary Rosa LaMarche, Diefenbaker’s housekeeper in Prince Albert, Sask., in the late 1930s.
Her daughter would tell them Thorne was the product of a dalliance between LaMarche and Diefenbaker, which would make them the former prime minister’s grandchildren.
When one of the brothers, Lawrence Goertzen, read about Dryden, he made contact three years ago.
Two of the siblings and Dryden did DNA tests. The result showed with near certainty that they had an uncle-nephew relationship.